At Plywerk, few things are as important to us as, well, planet Earth. We work hard to ensure our facilities and products are as eco-conscious as possible, and we source materials locally whenever we can. It just so happens, though, that the very core of many of our products—bamboo—is simply not possible to source locally, or in the United States at all. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t still source it sustainably.
All of our bamboo photo and art panels are made from premium Moso bamboo, and begin their lives as baby culms in their home environment of China’s Zhejiang province. Young culms grow as much as 2 feet per day! This rapid growth is what qualifies bamboo as a sustainable wood, which is also excellent at capturing and holding C02. It is so good at this, in fact, that many Moso bamboo products remain carbon negative throughout their entire production cycle, right up through delivery to your door. While the culms become full grown plants after just one year, it takes time for them to fully mature. We use only plywood manufactured from mature Moso, which is typically about 5 and a half years old. Mature Moso bamboo has compression strength comparable to concrete, which means your custom bamboo picture frames will last a long time to come.
Due to import restrictions, Moso bamboo currently does not grow anywhere in the US, but by working with bamboo plywood importer Teragren, we can rest assured knowing that all of our bamboo is of the highest quality and harvested sustainably. Teragren’s Moso plywood is simply the best in the business: for us, for you, and for the planet. After we receive the full-size panels from Teragren, we work our magic to cut them, sand them, finish them, and finally mount your beautiful photos and artwork to them. All grown up, our Plywerk is then sent to you where it will happily live out its days.
